An Interview with Rod Carley

In late March of 2004, CASP conducted the following interview with Rod Carley, a Canadian playwright and director distinguished by the range and inventiveness of his adaptive techniques in relation to Shakespeare. Carley is currently Coordinator of the new Theatre Arts (Acting) Program at Canadore College in North Bay, Ontario. Visit www.rep21.ca for info. Carley was nominated in 2009 for the TVO Best Lecturer award based on the following submission video, not surprisingly, on Shakespeare.

Rod Carley: a protean adaptive imagination

You’ve done a tremendous number of Shakespearean adaptations, working both as a playwright and a director. Why? What led to your interest in Shakespeare?

I got hooked on Shakespeare while attending the Theatre Programme at York University in the early eighties. I was fortunate enough to have Neil Freeman (currently at the University of British Columbia) as a professor in my third and fourth years. At that time Neil was just beginning his explorations of Shakespeare working from the Folio (1623) texts. Examining the original texts consumed me at the time––I truly became obsessed by his Shakespeare course. Dissecting Shakespeare's language right down to the smallest detail was invigorating––not academically but rather in terms of practical acting and directorial clues.  

I felt like a Shakespearean detective as I poured through the orthography of the scripts. I'd found my niche. Neil's passion was infective and he encouraged me to further my studies in Shakespeare. In my final year at York I created a number of independent studies courses under his guidance including examining the editorial practice of the original compositors of the Folio texts, Folio text analysis for directing, and working as Assistant Director on a production of Romeo and Juliet that Neil directed in the fall of 1985. I had developed this incredible missionary zeal for Shakespeare thanks to Neil's mentorship. At the same time I was developing my own take on Shakespeare and the need to make it relevant and accessible to a modern audience. I longed at that time to have the opportunity to put my imaginative ideas into concrete practise.

After graduating York I was quickly and rudely awakened to the real world of being a young director. Letters of reference served only as fond memories of my final years at York! For the next few years I voluntarily directed wherever I could––primarily in the Toronto community theatre circuit. My first production was The Crucible, which I set in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by an AIDS epidemic. It marked the beginning of my interest in adapting texts to different settings––fuelled by the political and social climate of the day. At the same time I was writing notes on some early directorial concepts I had for for Shakespeare hoping that I might get a crack at them one day.

At the same time the Stratford Festival was changing Artistic Directors and David William was taking over the helm. This was in the summer of 1989. On a long shot gambit, I put all my material together (paper concepts were all that I had) and sent them to him along with a letter of request to be his Assistant Director. To my surprise I did get an interview (a three hour marathon of Macbeth textual discussion as it turned out) and was offered an Assistant Directorship with David for the 1990 season. At the time I was the youngest assistant director to be employed in the Festival's history – or so I was told at any rate by the powers that be. My experiences over the next two seasons at Stratford (the following year I was Assistant Director for the Young Company) opened many doors for me as well as strengthening in me my desire to tackle Shakespeare on my terms. I received the Festival's first Jean Gascon Director's Award (given to a young director of promise) and that award allowed me to direct my first Shakespearean work in the early winter of 1991 – Twelfth Night. At the same time I began working as a Guest Artist at George Brown Theatre School and the Unversity of Windsor School of Dramatic Art teaching Shakespearean scene study working from the original texts. It was during these teaching contracts that I began to workshop with my students many of my ideas for adapting Shakespeare into comtemporary settings.

Could you comment on how the idea for The Othello Project was generated and the kind of process it went through (both in the writing and in the production processes).

The Othello Project began as a scene study exercise at George Brown Theatre School in the early spring of 1994. I adapted the first four scenes of Othello to Mississippi, 1964, to help the acting students hook into the play. At that point I had directed four previous Shakespeare works (including a Nazi Germany setting of As You Like It at George Brown in the fall of '93 as well as King Lear at the Annex Theatre with a company of Shaw and Stratford actors and a Sicilian mafia setting of Macbeth in June of '93). As an artist I was fully committed to and passionate about continuing to explore Shakespeare in contemporary settings. The Othello Project came out of this headspace.  

When my students presented their Othello scenes at the end of term scene showcase, I invited a few of the actors from King Lear to come and see what they thought of my concept. Billy Dunlop (who had played the Fool in Lear) was very excited about the Mississippi idea as I recall. With some positive feedback I set about working on adapting the script over the next year. In the fall of 1994 I applied for an OAC project grant and was turned down – part of the rationale being that it was a possible case of voice appropriation on my part – a Caucasian director depicting the racism of the early 1960s.

I continued to work on my adaptation and began to prepare another grant application for the spring of 1995. I spoke with members of the Canadian African and Jamaician artistic community in Toronto about the project. I received letters of support from a variety of individuals regarding my sensitivity to the issues at hand. The adaptation would also require five Canadian African/Jamaican actors. The second grant application to the OAC was successful. At the same time that I was working on Othello I was also working on a modern adaptation of Hamlet to be mounted that coming summer. In the spring of 1995 I taught a workshop for Equity Showcase using my developing adaptation of Othello as the course source text. Four of the actors in that workshop ended up being in the eventual production as did three of my former George Brown students and three of my former University of Windsor students. Nigel Shawn Williams and I had been talking back and forth about the project for about a year. Finally in September 1995 he came on board as did Jamie Williams as Iago who previously played the title role in my Macbeth. Rehearsals commenced in early November and The Othello Project opened on December 7th and ran to December 23rd at the Ford Centre for the Performing Arts Studio Theatre.

You’ve done a great deal of community outreach and regional theatre work. Could you comment on how Shakespeare figures in that work?

To date I have directed eight Shakespearean works as community outreach or regional theatre productions.   In the fall of 1994 I convinced the organisers of Brockville Riverfest (an eleven day summer festival in my hometown) that an outdoor Shakespearean production would add tremendously to the festival's playbill. The festival chairman at the time was a risk-taker and he gave me the green light to produce and direct a modern adaptation of Hamlet . In seeking to shorten the gap between Shakespeare's world and our own, I had the play unfold within the fictitious South American state of San Marco. The contemporary military dictatorship provided an accessible and practial backdrop to the action and came closer to representing the “Denmark” Shakespeare was referring to today.

Hamlet became a Riverfest audience favorite and that led to two more outdoor presentations: a JFK-based Julius Caesar in June 1996 and a Wyatt Earp inspired Coriolanus in June 1997 (Coriolanus was co-produced by Skylight Theatre and the show transferred to Earl Bales Park in North York for a two week run in July 1997).  

Much of my community outreach work began with acting and directing workshops in different communites – and in some cases a spark was ignited to mount a Shakespearean text (this was certainly the case for Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream in Lindsay, Ontario [in association with the now-defunct Kawartha Summer Theatre Festival]) and my 18th-century vampire court treatment of All's Well That Ends Well in Kingston in September 1997.  

Could you talk about any upcoming adaptations of Shakespeare that you may have planned. Rumours of a “hockey” adaptation involving the Toronto/Montreal rivalry abound … Ken Hudson did a hockey adaptation of Henry V in 2000 and Richard Rose has directed a Stratford Shakespeare production with hockey as a key metaphor. How do you mix hockey and Shakespeare?

My Henry V concept has been percolating for about five years now (ever since reading Stephen Cole's The Last Hurrah – the definitive book on the 1967 playoffs between the underdog Leafs and the Canadien dynasty as the Leafs won the Stanley Cup for the last time).  My one true boyhood ambition, to play hockey for the Toronto Maple Leafs, was ruled out early by my remarkable wrist shot, which possessed all the potency of puffed wheat. Eventually, however, I did abandon my baseless dreams of a career in the big leagues and embraced a career in the theatre.  

The final Toronto goal in the 1967 Stanley Cup finals was also the final goal of the Leafs's dynasty and the last shining moment for the Toronto franchise to date. And so ended what was to become known as the Golden Age of Canadian Hockey. As Cole wrote, “we all thought the Leaf-Canadien rivalry would last forever. It didn't. The 1966-67 season was the last hurrah for a rivalry that sustained Canada through more than forty winters.   The last time that hockey seemed securely, yes, perhaps even smugly ours. Those who were there will never forget it… for four decades there were two professional hockey teams in Canada. One of two hockey sweaters was passed out under the tree at Christmas. Somewhere along the way the dye from those scratchy wool sweaters must've seeped into our skins.”

In Henry V the clarion call of stirring patriotism is set against the uncompromising harshness of war – a fitting analogy for the 1967 Stanley Cup finals and the Canadian mythology of hockey. Henry V sets aside his roistering ways to become a model king and military leader, winning back his great grandfather's French lands. Henry's journey also fits within the context of the Toronto Maple Leafs at the time – loosely modelled on Dave Keon.  

The glory of an English victory is hard-won. Outnumbered five to one the English are an exhausted, ragged, desperate band (characteristic of the Leafs' aged veteran team). The French nobles provide a spectacular contrast, refulgent in golden armour on horseback – suggestive of the youth and arrogance of the Montreal Canadiens dynasty. The Canadiens were favoured to win. The Battle of Agincourt is a bloody, confusing, muddy and slaughtering affair. Despite the overwhelming odds against them, the English emerge the victors – as do the Leafs. The six game series was a battle that left both teams spent and exhausted. My adaptation will be crafted so that the six games provide the framework for the action – the eve before a game, game day, in the locker room, on the ice, in the stands, the broadcast booth, at the Wheatsheaff tavern, etc.

Henry V's Prologues's epilogue (the ghost of former Leaf Bill Barilko* in my adaptation [see below]) is a regretful coda to so promising a match and the English victory is short-lived. The uncompromising ebb and flow of history is foretold. Two years later and Henry V is dead and his infant son, Henry VI, is crowned. The “dogs of war” are unleashed again and the French take back France leaving the English to bleed. Likewise, after the centennial year, everything began to change as hockey slowly became an American spectator sport. The league doubled in size. Hockey would never be the same again. TV profits helped boost players' salaries to astronomical heights. Colour television arrived on the eve of the centennial year. The Americans, who hadn't even bothered to telecast hockey's greatest season in 1967, soon made hockey their own game. Expansionism replaced heroism. How does one create a national icon out of a team named the Mighty Ducks? And now, with the re-working of the team conferences playoff structure, the Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs can never play in a Stanley Cup final again. The Rocket must be rolling over in his grave.

*N.B. Leafs legendary player Bill Barilko went missing on a fishing trip in Northern Ontario following the Leafs' 1951 Stanley Cup victory over the Canadiens. His body wasn't found until 1962 (the Leafs didn't win another cup until the year his body was discovered). His jersey was retired from the game and it is believed his ghost still haunts Maple Leaf Gardens. Canadian recording artists The Tragically Hip wrote their song "Fifty Mission Cap" in 1992 in honour of Barilko.     

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Henry V

By William Shakespeare
Adapted by Rod Carley

In 1415 the English defeated the French on the fields of Agincourt…over 500 years later they're preparing to meet again …

this time on ice … May, 1967 … the Stanley Cup finals … the Leafs versus the Habs

Hockey and Shakespeare like you've never seen it before!

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I am also working on a new adaptation of Julius Caesar based on Pierre Elliot Trudeau, the FLQ and events surrounding the October Crisis of the early seventies. Caesar is naturally based on Trudeau and he is assassinated in Ottawa by members of the FLQ as an act of revenge in the wake of his handling of “Black October”––Brutus is based on Levesque (a moderate at the time), Cassius on Rose (one of the French cell's leaders), Mark Anthony on Justice Minister of the time, John Turner, superstitous Calphurnia on Margaret Trudeau, etc. The adaptation will be in both official languages depending on what characters are involved and in what scene context.

Could you reflect on the extent to which Shakespearean influences figure in your work as a playwright generally?

I find that Shakespeare's sense of structuring influences my other writing a great deal. The fact that all of Shakespeare's work is a debate (steeped in Elizabethan rhetoric) certainly helps in the understanding and writing of character-based arguments and employment of wit as a tool and weapon.

Shakespeare's care in his specific choice of words is always an important reminder when writing, both imaginatively and rhythmically. Also, because English was still in a new, exploratory stage at the time of Shakespeare, there are all these wonderful irregularities of iambic pentameter, punctutation, and unusual spellings in his texts that give suggestions as to emotional state, change and word use. This sense of free-form creation is very liberating in my own writing.

To what extent is theatrical culture in Canada (in your reading of it) a function of Shakespearean theatre?

Is Canadian theatrical culture a function of Shakespearean theatre? I think because we are still a young country we have been influenced a great deal by English theatre practises, particularly when it comes to Shakespeare.   We are the only country that I know of that initially based its national culture on other country's works!   When the Stratford Festival became Canada's flagship national theatre company, it was, and continued to be for many years, a transplanting of traditional British Shakespeare theatre in the colonies. Some would argue it still is. The fact that only now do we have our first Canadian-born Artistic Director of the Festival says a lot. But a lot has happened in Canada since the alternate theatre movement began in the early seventies––we are growing exponentially artistically and that includes approaching Shakespeare's works from a decidely more non-British point of view.

Is adaptation a way of overwriting Shakespearean source texts? What are the problems facing a playwright who undertakes a Shakespearean adaptation?

In terms of my own adaptations, I work from Shakespeare's original language (with the occasional word or phrase change). The ideas is to find a transplanted setting that doesn't force you to tamper with the text. Too much tampering and you are trying to force a square peg in a round hole and your adaptation ultimately fails. The only reason to adapt the text to another setting is to illuminate it more clearly for today's audience. The question to ask when adapting a Shakespearean text is “does the transfer work?” Only when the political, societal, and historical elements of the original match with the new setting is your adaptation working.   Otherwise, you are overriding Shakespeare's text to fit your own vision. The key is to find a new context for the original in which to explore its themes, not a concept. Concepts are not rooted in the original. Contexts are.

Adaptation of Shakespeare in Canada is a flourishing genre. The CASP research team has found close to 500 plays that are clear adaptations dating back to pre-Confederation. To what extent does this tradition of adapting define specifically Canadian theatrical practices (if one can even speak of such practices with any validity)?

I don't know if the tradition of adapting defines a specific trait of Canadian theatre or not. In terms of the process of adapting, I think it comes down to source material. If the source material is sound then an adaptation may very well spring out of it. So many fine Canadian scripts have been adapted from excellent Canadian novels and short stories. I don't think that the notion of adapting in Canada is a negative – rather quite the opposite. And then there is the argument that all art is in some way derivative.

What are the uses of Shakespearean adaptation? In your work specifically?

One adapts a Shakespearean text to help more clearly define it for a modern audience. Different time periods become a window through which Shakespeare can be glimpsed and historical parallels allow for the appreciation of Shakespeare's universality. In seeking to shorten the gap between Shakespeare's world and our own I find that by finding an appropriate modern setting, it is easier for an audience to embrace his work as they already have a sense of modern history that they can relate to. You still have to find a modern setting that is removed enough from the immediate present so that it can serve as an analogy though. For instance, I found that my JFK analogy for Julius Caesar worked particularly well for the conspirators. Each one represented a different conspiracy theory for the JFK assassination (mafia, military, Russian, Cuban, American government, J. Edgar Hoover). Thus there weren't seven conspirators in confusing togas but rather seven very different individuals recognizably costumed from this chapter in American history. Because the visual was familiar, it was easier to get the audience to listen to Shakespeare's text and understand it.

Does adaptation necessarily place the playwright in a compromised position (in terms of reinforcing theatrical tradition) or does it afford opportunities to remake that tradition? Are there examples in your own work you would point to as part of your response?

I believe adaptations do afford the playwright the opportunity to move away from theatrical tradition by the sheer inventiveness and integrity of their adaptation. We adapt Shakespeare's work so as not to have it as some dusty museum artifact of theatre history.  One puts reverence aside and drags Shakespeare off his pedestal and gets him back on the rehearsal floor where he belongs. Out of that can come the life and pulse that is the brilliance of Shakespeare – alive and kicking. I try to imagine that each time I work on a Shakespeare adaptation that the script was sent to me in an unmarked manilla evelope and that I have no idea who the author is. I have no preconceptions or familiar stereotypes. But rather a new, throbbing script by this unknown author whose insight into human behaviour is uncanny. Hopefully by approaching the work in this manner my adaptation will be a redefinition unto itself. I felt that The Othello Project, in particular, helped audience-goers see Othello anew.

What theatrical techniques do you see as most useful in the adaptation of Shakespeare genre?

It is the necessary care taken in editing Shakespeare's text when adapting that is crucial. Shakespeare's audience was an aural one capable of assimilating fifteen different images in a given speech at lightning speed. Today are visually based––we can absorb 35 to 40 edits a miniute in a fim or music video and think nothing if it.  As a result I try to carefully trim speeches and dialogue sections so that I get at the key images without sacrificing the subtlety and nuances of the writing. It's kind of Shakespearean paleontology – remove the rock fragments of diffiuclt or confusing text so that you reveal a clean bone of text from which a recognizable skeleton can be built.  

I also find that I approach my Shakespearean adaptations with a cinematic eye––as a result the theatrical techniques I employ rely heavily on design. The visual of the transplanted setting has to be in place to support and make the text stand out comprehensibly.      

What ideological / political implications do you see to adapting Shakespeare in a Canadian context?

The implication of adapting Shakespeare in a Canadian context is that we do have a history that is exciting and interesting enough to be used so as to draw a parallel with a Shakespearean text. I'm more interested now at this stage of my development in trying to find more Canadian political and historical settings for Shakespeare.     

It has been said that adaptation is a way of talking across cultures and across time--a way of relating to other authors and contexts intertextually--would you agree with this sense of adaptation in relation to your own work?

Yes, I feel that the work I have done adapting Shakespeare is an act of relating contexts intertextually. The original context of Shakespeare meets the adapted context or setting through the text. That is the only way you can tell if you're adaptation is going to be useful and meaningful.

How far would you be prepared to go in defining what an adaptation is? To what extent must some form of Shakespeare be present in an adaptation for it to be called Shakespearean?

I can only speak for my work but I feel that Shakespeare must be presented with his original language intact. The challenge is to adapt his work to another appropriate setting with very little tampering of the text. I feel the reason to even do a Shakespearean adaptation is to help keep Shakespeare's work alive, relevant and accessible for a modern audience.  

Could you reflect on your own cultural background in relation to your writing and in relation to being "Canadian"?

I was born in Brockville, Ontario, which is at the southern most tip of the Ottawa Valley in Eastern Ontario. I'm a fourth generation Canadian – my father's family were orignally Irish and my mother's were French Hugenots who were booted out of France because of their Protestant beliefs and then booted out of England because of their French heritage.

I think many Canadians have a somewhat similar history – people escaping here looking for a better life. I think I went to York as a theatre student for that reason initially. I think also I come from a long line of “scrappers” in the sense of wrangly survivors and underdogs. Certainly this sensibility is very much a part of who I am and is reflected in my work.

I remember Mavor Moore at York during one of his fourth-year Canadian Theatre history lectures saying how we Canadians are descended from a country of losers – the French beat the Indians, the British beat the French, then the Yanks beat the British (and the loser U.E.L.'s came here). He also suggested that Canada is historically a country where people settled for second best. I remember these as being provocative statements at the time – he was trying to get a rise out of us. But there is truth to what he said. Many artists work from that insecure headspace unconsciously and yet, ironically, we are creating an artistic identity for this country that is truly becoming our own. Is it fuelled from Mavor Moore's comments? Maybe so. I feel we as artists in Canada are alchemists of the soul––we transform our often base and saddened history into precious metals of worth and individuality.  And maybe that is the Canadian identity in the end––a question of alchemy.

In so many cases being Canadian becomes a way of talking about elsewhere spaces that get mapped onto Canada. What role do you think theatre plays in that mapping of local and international identities that seems to be so crucial to discussions of Canadian identity?

I think Canadian theatre, in all its many forms, plays a crucial role in mapping out Canada's identity both locally and internationally.  I have seen the impact of the original musical we create each season for the Nipissing Stage Company in North Bay – part of the company's mandate is to develop and produce an original musical that celebrates the history and heritage of Northern Ontario.  The impact of the original musical each season on local audiences is huge. They come and see their own history and stories unfolding before them on stage, being shared with them––this becomes a tremendous spiritual boost to the community's self-esteem and identity. And I think that stories like this happen across the country; Canadian theatre finding its roots in the local community and serving so many by doing so. And isn't it interesting that so many of our most famous works internationally stem from these local roots: David French's Leaving Home or Michael Healey's The Drawer Boy. It is these small “c” Canadian stories that find their way into the hearts of audiences globally because of the honesty to their locality – and that in turn is universal.  

I found it interesting directing The Othello Project in Miami in terms of being a Canadian depicting Othello in a very controversial American setting. I was once asked by a reporter, “why we Canadians don't like Americans?”   And I remember responding by saying, “It's not that we don't like you. It's just that we are not an egocentric nation. We study and appreciate many different countries' histories and cultures and in turn accept these cultures in our country. We don't see the world as being all about us. And because you believe the world revolves around you, you open yourself up to criticism and analogies from the rest of us. So in some ways we are observers of your world, more actively put, we are interpreters and chroniclers.”

So maybe at the end of the day, the Canadian identity is also very close to Shakespeare's: both the most important chroniclers of our times.

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